Covid Lite

JUST WHEN YOU think that the pandemic is a memory, the virus pulls a surprise — as it has done again and again. Delta followed Alpha like a wreck­ing ball just as humanity had begun to heave a sigh of relief after an unprecedented lockdown of itself. Then there was Omicron, which first led to extreme anxiety by the speed of its spread but then revealed itself to be something of a damp squib in terms of the damage it left in its wake.

Now, when the world had found firm footing again, news is coming in bits and spurts that a fresh wave is on the loose. It is a lineage of Omicron that goes by the very droll name of JN.1. The World Health Organisation (WHO) last month, in a report, said its spread was sufficiently large enough to take note of it as a separate entity, a variant of interest. It said: ‘Previously, JN.1 was tracked as part of BA.2.86, the parent lineage that is classified as a variant of interest (VOI). However, in recent weeks, JN.1 con­tinues to be reported in multiple countries, and its prevalence has been rapidly increasing globally and now represents the vast majority of BA.2.86 descendent lineages reported to GISAID. Due to its rapidly increasing spread, WHO is classifying JN.1 as a separate variant of interest (VOI) from the parent lineage BA.2.86.’

India has witnessed a rise, too, although it is a far cry from the very peak of the pandemic in May of 2021 when a single day saw more than 4,00,000 new cases. At present, there are only around 200-odd new cases a day and even the total number of active cases is just under 3,000. But these numbers are still greater than what it was a couple of months ago. In one November day last year, for instance, there were just 14 new cases and all over India, there were only around 150 infected in total. And then from the beginning of December onward, it began to creep up, touching a small high before declining again. JN.1 is still making itself felt in new states. Just this week, Uttarakhand said that it had found its first JN.1 patient. The variant began in Kerala and then moved on to other states. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Kerala account for the largest number of cases at present.

Across the world, the situation is similar. JN.1 was first detected in Luxembourg in August. From there, it moved to other countries. In the US, it spread rapidly as December got underway and people started moving about for the holiday season. The headline of an article in The New York Times on January 10 read, ‘We Are in a Big Covid Wave. But Just How Big?’, in which it said that one of the more accurate indicators of the acceleration of the spread can be found from analysis of waste­water or sewage. It wrote: ‘‘Reported levels of the virus in U.S. wastewater are higher than they have been since the first Omi­cron wave, according to data from the Centers for Disease Con­trol and Prevention, though severe outcomes still remain rarer than in earlier pandemic winters.’’ A week later, China stated that it expected a resurgence in cases, with one of the country’s health officials saying at a press briefing that the holiday season and a large floating population were assisting the transmission.

That the case load at present is near-negligible as compared to the middle of the pandemic doesn’t mean much because of the exponential nature of a wave. Massive jumps can hap­pen. And yet, the world is not panicking. This is because of an inverse correlation between the lethality of viruses and their speed of spread. JN.1 is said to have just the smallest of muta­tions in one of its spike proteins that makes it better evade the body’s immune system. Yale Medicine wrote in a December 10 article: “A difference between BA.2.86 and JN.1 is that the latter has one mutation in its spike protein, a single change that may or may not alter any of the traits that characterize the virus, al­though preliminary research shows that it may provide extra immune evasion.” That small change is what has led to its proliferation now as it goes on to be the dominant strain across the world. But it is not accompanied by greater severity of symptoms because almost all human bodies on earth have met the virus and the immune systems are familiar enough with it to mount a cogent response. Also, it is in the virus’ own interest to be less severe, since its primary objective is not to kill the host but to survive by replicating itself. The more easily it lives with humans, the better it is able to meet this objective. Viruses that start pandemics eventu­ally end up becoming ordinary and be­nign. The one that caused the Spanish Flu pandemic, the worst recorded in human history, is still around but in an emasculated form that co-exists with humans. This was always going to be what Covid would end up as. Omicron was the first signal of that when it revealed itself to be mostly harmless. Now with JN.1, no one is even thinking of vaccines or masks. No one also tests anymore to see if they have Covid, which is why it is difficult to know just how widespread this variant is. Quite possibly, much greater numbers than what the records show are getting infected even now, except that what is not felt remains invisible.

There are still sounds of alarm around. On January 10, the World Health Organisation held a virtual press briefing in which it said: “Just as governments and individuals take pre­cautions against other diseases, we must all continue to take precautions against Covid-19. Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable death is not acceptable. We continue to call on governments to maintain surveillance and sequencing, and to ensure access to affordable and reliable tests, treatments and vaccines for their populations. And we continue to call on individuals to be vaccinated, to test, to wear masks where needed and to ensure crowded indoor spaces are well ventilated.” But governments, who usually are the first to panic, have chosen to not overreact. There have been media reports citing health ministry sources in India that say there is no need for booster vaccination shots. States issued advisories asking for vulnerable groups to be vigi­lant, but beyond that there was no suggestion of any coercive policies like that of the past. The chief of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), a consortium of 67 laborato­ries that monitors the virus, too, stated in an interview to a news agency that there was no need for boosters and only the elderly or those with co-morbidities need to be cautious.

No one wants a return to a world of mandatory masking and rules impossible to enforce, like keeping a distance of six feet be­tween human beings. It would need more than mild fever and sore throat for that to happen. There is no reason for Covid to mutate into a harsher version of itself.

Pandemics don’t strike back-to-back but the possibility of another one happening has been looming large over human consciousness. People and institutions will contin­ue to be obsessed with it. On Janu­ary 17, the World Economic Forum in its annual meeting in Davos had a panel discussion on preparing for Disease X, which is in fact a virus that does not exist but in imagination. Disease X is defined by the WHO as representing, “the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.” Because of how Covid and its vac­cinations divided people politically and ideologically, the idea of coming up with preemptive measures against Disease X has already be­come a fractious talking point online. One of the consequences of Covid, fuelled by social media and conspiracy theories, has been a suspicion of the very institutions that have to helm the battle against such diseases. Questions over what led to the vi­rus in the first place, whether it was a laboratory accident or a natural phenomenon, still remain open. Even as the virus itself becomes less and less consequential with each successive vari­ant, the faultlines it opened might last considerably longer.

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